Macquarie Dictionary Blog
The Committee's Choice for Word of the Year 2016 goes to...
Jan 25, 2017
The Committee's Choice for the 2016 Word of the Year is fake news. Honourable mentions go to enby and halal snack pack.
Committee's comment
The concept of fake news is one of the big issues of 2016, not only in Australia but around the world. It captures an interesting evolution in the creation of deceptive content as a way of herding people in a specific direction. There has come a point with fake news where people are beginning to believe what they want to believe, whether or not the news story is actually true.
Committee's comment
Enby is an interesting construction; it has moved from the abbreviation NB (for non-binary) to a word in its own right. Gender identity has been a powerful part of the political discourse in Australia over the past year.
Committee's comment
The significance of halal snack pack is that it tells us about something once confined largely to the Muslim community that is now surfacing throughout the broader Australian community.
The Committee for the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year 2016
People's Choice
Now it's YOUR turn to have a say. Do you agree or disagree with the Committee? Read through the shortlist below and vote for your top three now!
Nominations for Word of the Year are selected from new words included in the annual update of the Macquarie Dictionary Online in 2016. The Committee is provided with a list of 75 words from which they select a top 15 for you to vote on. Voting for the People's Choice Word of the Year closes on Tuesday 31 January at 5:00pm AEDT.
The Committee's top 15 are as below.
Download the Committee's Choice top 15 shortlist as text or images.
Download:
Macquarie_Dictionary_Announces_Word_of_the_Year_2016.pdf
Join the discussion!
11 Comments
Hope you voted for People's Choice then!
Why do you make the font size of the explanations so tiny? I have to use the magnifying glass function to read them.
You can download a text file of the entries here - https://goo.gl/MMdIiF
I guess it came to prominence during the US presidential election campaign but the coal, tobacco and sugar industries have been disseminating fake news for more than a generation.
Having looked at the other 60 words, I feel that some of the 15 shortlisted are possibly undeserving. Personally, I believe it's unfortunate that concepts (such as fake news) can be voted Word of the Year in place of actual words, such as fridging or cratedigger, which have a less obvious and more interesting background.
People's Choice is still up for grabs! So if you haven't already voted for your favourite shortlist words we recommend doing it right away as voting closes at 5pm.
Very disappointing - the committee has confused concepts with their descriptors. Fake news and HSP are not "words", much less witty or wise words. And fake news should not be given the dignity. I think I'll wait for a greige day and go bush for some youlk.
Technically, they are lexical items - http://goo.gl/X9R5NP
This was so interesting to follow. Are there criteria that the contenders need to satisfy other than entering the dictionary in 2016?
To be considered for the dictionary, they need to meet certain other criteria, namely currency. From these words, the editors choose words that are indicative of the year, interesting coinages or both.
https://goo.gl/eaP72h
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Great Shortlist, though you didn't get the top three quite right. Interesting that we now have "alternative facts" which appear to be designed to take advantage of fake news sites and filter bubbles (and annoy those who believe truth is important).